How following Jesus nearly tore my family apart, then brought it together again. A story from the archives with a new interpretive movement for a new context. (Listen here.)
I’d like to introduce you to a very shocking man: my father. But to understand why he is so shocking, first you need to know a bit about my mother. Like me, my mother grew up Baptist. Unlike me, however, she was raised in a fundamentalist household. Her family of origin rejected infant baptism, evolution, smoking, divorce, and many other things. Because my mum was super-smart and good at languages, and because everybody knew that no man would marry a super-smart woman, she had been groomed from an early age to be a Bible-translating missionary spinster. So away she went to university to study anthropology and linguistics: but there she met the man who became my father.
My grandfather was horrified. My father had been baptised as an infant, and as a Methodist at that. He was a biologist who specialised in the evolution of Australian marsupials. He smoked cigarettes. Most shocking of all, his first marriage had been a disaster and he was divorced.
My grandparents knew the Bible back-to-front. They knew that Jesus says, ‘Whoever divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.’ (Mark 10:11). They also knew that, according to Leviticus, anyone who commits adultery must be put to death (20:10). They were deeply concerned about their daughter so they rejected my father, sight unseen, and began a campaign.
From the outset, they refused to meet him, and they prayed long and hard that the marriage would be called off. But if that wasn’t to be, then they prayed that he’d be taken away somehow. A couple of days before the wedding, my mum said to her parents, ‘Despite all your prayers, he hasn’t been hit by a bus yet. It would be helpful if you knew which man in a suit was the groom.’ Only then did my grandparents, very reluctantly, agree to meet him.
In the meantime, they’d also whipped up their wider networks. For many years my mother had corresponded with missionaries. She wrote a letter to one or another every morning before breakfast. Now the missionaries all wrote to her, threatening never to write again if she persisted in this disaster. When she went to church, people took her aside to describe the terrible sin she was about to commit, and the eternal consequences. Again and again she was told by people she loved that, if she married my father, she was going to hell and would be excommunicated forever. She found refuge with the principal of the Baptist theological college and his wife, staying with them in the months leading up to the wedding. Outraged that the principal was harbouring such a sinful young woman, two churches left the Baptist Union in protest.
Sadly, many of us can tell similar stories. Maybe of a family ripped apart by differing convictions about marriage, sexuality or gender. Maybe of a church ripped apart by differing convictions over Israel and Palestine, or vaccines, or the trustworthiness of science, or even the colour of the new carpet. Maybe a denomination split by diverging theologies on the ordination of women (still!), or religious nationalism, or what it means to be human. And on every side, we see people claiming to be faithful as they lob grenades over the fence.
This is all very strange. For when Jesus asks, ‘Do you think I have come to bring peace to the earth?’ my answer is ‘Yes!’ When he was born, angels sang that there would be peace among those in whom God delights: so it seems reasonable to expect peace. But all around, we see rupture in his name. And in today’s reading, Jesus says ‘No!’, that he brings fire to the earth, he brings division, and that households will be torn apart. So, were the angels wrong about him? Am I wrong? Did Jesus really come in order to wield fire and destruction, to generate conflict, to destroy relationships?
It depends on our understanding of peace. If we think peace is comfortable agreement or passive disengagement or the absence of conflict, then I don’t think Jesus brings this. For Jesus’ peace is not peace as the world knows it. It’s not a military peace enforced by fear and domination. It’s not the false peace of churches which insist on social conformity and expel anyone who’s different. And it’s not the shaky peace of the conflict avoidance so beloved by white middle-class Christians. Nor is Jesus’ peace about denial or dishonesty. It’s not about papering over injustice or trauma or bullying or sin; it’s not about glib cheerfulness in the face of it all; and it’s certainly not about being nice.
Instead, Jesus’ peace is about living in right relationship with God and one another. He dares us to dream of a world radiant with truth, light, mercy and justice, a world where we can be fully known and loved and there are no barriers to God’s table. But for that vision to become a reality, there will be some hard conversations. There will be truth-telling. There will be deep listening, and some things will need to change.
This is when conflict erupts. Because most people fear change and will do anything they can to block it. This is why Jesus says he brings division. It’s not that he’s trying to trigger conflict. It’s just that he knows that those who follow him tend to turn things rightside up. They ask difficult questions, they prompt difficult conversations, they begin to live differently: and those around them react. Family, church, society can all become enraged, very often in God’s name.
As Jesus himself discovered, being faithful is not always fun. Being true to God’s call can lead to great conflict, even excommunication and other suffering.
But for those who are inflamed by the spirit, who seek to embody Christ’s vision, and who are willing to live with the discomfort; for those who keep turning up in love even when things get difficult; for those who are willing to do the hard work of peacemaking over and over again, there is a promise. Yes, there might be conflict; yes, there might be schism; yes, it might even erupt within our own families, just as Jesus found himself at odds with his mother and siblings. Even so, this way of living, of loving, of serving and of incarnating Christ through conflict and beyond is worth it. For in the long run it promises the peace which surpasses all understanding; the peace which is a hallmark of the Spirit’s presence; the peace which is true communion.
This is all very nice and theoretical, but no doubt you are wondering what happened with my parents. Well, they married, and immediately they moved across the country to get out of everyone’s way. Then, once the dust had settled, and despite all the anger and hurt and grief and rejection which people on both sides felt, my parents, my grandparents, and all those around them kept showing up for one another, and they kept trying to follow Jesus.
It turned out that the missionaries still wrote to my mother, after all. My mother’s parents remained deeply concerned, of course, but they also remained in contact. They wrote letters, and made phone calls, and visited from time to time, slowly working things out. Eventually love prevailed, and people came to terms with my father. He and my grandpa began having long conversations about the Bible and science, law and grace, judgement and forgiveness, and other things that really matter. They became, I’d suggest, true friends. And in time my father was granted a special cup and saucer, which only came out when he visited his in-laws to drink tea and talk, in God’s peace. For my family, and for every bunch of ordinary mixed-up heroes, those faithful people who try to love through conflict and beyond: thanks be to God. Ω
Where & when: Wurundjeri country. We’re now in Guling, Orchid Season. The silver wattles are in full bud, just about to burst into a riot of golden pompoms.
Reflection on Luke 12:49-52 shared with Manningham Uniting Church, 17 August 2025 (Proper 15 Year C) © Alison Sampson, 2025. Photo by Zach Lucero on Unsplash.
Alison and the whale 